OUR MANIFESTO
The Neuro Rich-Club is a not-for-profit organization based in the University of British Columbia. Our goal has been to enrich the minds of students and address their struggles as they embark on their university careers. Our mission is to support the mental health issues of freshmen on campus by helping them develop connections with experts who will help them overcome the barriers these young pupils will be facing. The support that we provide is heavily backed with sciences. This level of personal connection can lead to a stronger support system and allow the students with mental health issues to develop greater resiliency.
THE PROBLEMS WE WANT TO SOLVE
Transitioning from a chaperoned high-school environment to a completely independent university lifestyle can be incredibly difficult for many first-year students. Add to that the pressure of living alone for the first time, and making decisions as an adult, and these hardship become obvious when we look at mental health statistics. According to the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, “35% of first-year college students suffered from mental illness, particularly depression or anxiety” (Eva, 2019). We understand the effect of mental wellness on overall brain health and more particularly academic performance. This is why it is our mission to offer practical resources to our members. organization’s top priorities.
OUR SOLUTION
As our mission statement outlines, we seek to bring awareness to the negated yet incredibly important topic of brain health. We want to offer resources that work for the students and ensure they have the ability to access these resources.
As part of our awareness campaign, we perform presentations on mental-wellbeing for freshmen at UBC, especially for students in Science One and those dealing with the challenges of first-year residents. In the future we also hope to partner with Brain Canada to further support research into brain health and healthcare technology.
To ensure healthcare accessibility for UBC students, we want to recognize that although there are support systems in place, UBC is vast, wait-times are long, and over-reliance on self-advocacy deters to students from seeking help for their wellbeing on campus. In the near future, we primarily want to apply pressure to UBC services to ensure they can accommodate all individuals’ needs. We also want to tentatively push for an “out-reach” healthcare support system to better serve the community and get to the students before the problems even start to manifest. This means pushing for UBC services that are dynamic and meet the needs of individuals where they’re already at. This could also mean encouraging students to seek counselling, even if there is “nothing wrong”, in order to get ahead of problems that inevitably arise by midterm and finals seasons.